Commentary

5:00 am

Fri March 28, 2014

Richard Crowson: Blowing Their Cover

Whew! That ol’ Kansas wind! It’s been blowing like crazy lately with gusts up to 35 miles per hour and higher.

Credit Joseph Novak / Flickr / Creative Commons

It’s been blowing so hard that it completely blew the cover off a couple of Koch subsidiaries.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity were left shivering and coverless by those recent gusts. The Kansas Chamber and Americans for Prosperity are known for their own windy proclamations about jobs and how much they, oh, so sincerely just want what’s best for the Kansas economy.

And then along came what’s called our renewable portfolio standard, in shorthand: RPS. For five years this requirement that Kansas utilities get 15 percent of their energy from wind has been attracting $7 billion in investment to our state and over 12,000 jobs, according to recent reports.

Let me say that again: $7 billion invested in Kansas and over 12,000 jobs for Kansans.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce, aren’t they in the business of promoting commerce for Kansans? Americans for Prosperity, aren’t they all for, um, well, prosperity?

As it turns out, no. They got their minions in the Kansas Senate to vote to repeal the job-creating RPS. It fell to the ragtag Kansas House of Representatives to finally take a stand for Kansas investment and Kansas jobs by voting to keep the RPS.

Now we know the truth about the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity. The wind issue has completely blown their cover. They work for a competing energy industry.

Kansans who want clean energy can hang, twisting in the wind for all they care. They don’t want to promote wind. They want to break wind.